1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvements in the production of bread. More particularly, it relates to an improved method of producing high-quality bread where the step of preparing dough with the use of water, which is indispensable in conventional bread production, is modified, and also to such dietary fibrous bread per se as produced according to the improved method.
2. Discussion of the Background
Bread is, in general, produced by adding yeast and salt to a main raw material (wheat flour or other cereal flour) to prepare dough. The dough is fermented, and then baked or steamed (See "New Edition of Encyclopedia of Food Industry", edited by the Food Industry Society of Japan, published by Kohrin Co., 1993).
Known methods for producing such bread include a direct kneading method, where the raw materials are all at once kneaded together, and a sponge dough method. Recently, a liquid seed method has been proposed, which includes a batch method and a continuous method. Also known are partially modified methods derived from these methods. One example of such partially modified methods is a method of using a powerful mixer or a dough improver to shorten the time for fermentation of the dough.
However, bread produced according to these known methods, comprising kneading raw materials with water to give dough, fermenting the resulting dough and then baking, is light bread from which most of the water used in preparing the dough has been lost. This light bread rapidly hardens and becomes brittle immediately after production.
In order to overcome this problem, sugar, and oils and fats, are used in the production of bread. Bread produced in this way can be creamy, but is not elastic; it becomes brittle the day after it is produced. The more it is chewed, the stickier or mucous its texture becomes. For these reasons, there is a general recognition that bread tastes good only when it is fresh, and fresh bread is usually put on the counters in bakeries even immediately after air cooling, like cookies. Even though re-heated, bread of this type is not restored to its original fresh taste, but rather becomes brittle. If heated in a microwave oven, the bread loses its original fresh taste and becomes sticky or mucous. Slices of bread are therefore toasted in a toaster, but the toasted bread becomes more brittle. Brittle, toasted-bread is generally eaten with butter or jam. Thus, conventional methods of producing bread, in which water (free water) is used in the step of preparing the dough, are still problematic in that the taste of the bread produced is unsatisfactory.
In an attempt to make good use of dietary fiber, it has been used as one of the raw materials to produce bread. However, the use of dietary fiber is problematic in that the bread loses its creaming quality during the step of baking. An attempt to mix purified konjak flour, a raw material for commercial Japanese konjak products, with wheat flour, for producing bread, has also been made. This was, however, ineffective in improving the quality of the bread. To produce commercial Japanese konjak products, konjak flour is first mixed with water and swollen (over a period of 100 minutes or longer), and then kneaded with a coagulant to give konjak paste, and the resulting paste is shaped and heated to give an irreversibly gelled konjak product, which is the form in which it is sold. In another attempt, adding konjak paste, neither shaped nor heated, to the ordinary raw materials of bread has been tried, by first adding water (free water) and mixing with the ordinary raw materials for bread and thereafter a suitable amount of konjak paste is added and kneaded to give dough. In these attempts, however, the use of konjak flour could not produce any meaningful results, and with the mismatched combination of bread and konjak the former being a Western-style food while the latter being a Japanese-style food, no approach to diversified changes in dietary habits was provided. At present, therefore, there has not been developed a good use of dietary fiber in bread.
Water is definitely needed in preparing dough for bread: water improves the expansion of dough and as is indispensable in homogenizing raw materials into dough. Fresh bread is both aromatic and tasty and does not contain any excess water. Thus, bread has served as the principal food all over the world. However, with developments in the mass production of bread, it is often served on the day following its production, and such one-day old bread often becomes hard, losing its original aroma, and the texture often becomes sticky or mucous. These problems are inevitable to bread, and have not been solved as of yet.
In order to compensate for these drawbacks, various food additives have been used in bread production. However, at present, even these additives cannot improve the technique of producing bread. For example, alum (potassium aluminum sulfate) is used in order to improve the expansion of dough and to improve the crispness of bread; while sodium metaphosphate, pyrophosphates, polyphosphates or the like are used for the purpose of controlling the viscosity of dough so that the crispness of bread is improved. In addition, anti-aging additives for bread include esters, such as glycerin fatty acid esters, propylene glycol fatty acid esters and sorbitan fatty acid esters. However, the demand for bread of various types, including loaves of bread, which do not use these additives, is increasing.